GFalling, crying, winning – things finally worked out great for 22-year-old Sanremo debutant Angelina Mango at the 74th edition of the hit Italian festival on Liguria's flower coast. On the way home, so to speak, he surpassed only the last five nights of the legendary music festival, the Neapolitan rapper Geolier, whose Campania dialect song “I p' me, tu p' te” (“I for me, you for you”) was always in the lead. Angelina Mango owed his victory to the television audience vote, which carried 34 percent of the overall vote on Sunday night, ahead of Geolier in the cumulative votes of the press and radio listeners, which received 33 percent each.
Perhaps even a fall on the stage stairs helped her, when the singer tripped over her dress and finished the song “La noia” (Boredom) while sitting and with tears in her eyes. After announcing the win, Mango shed more tears, this time thanks. For the first time in ten years, a woman has won Europe's oldest pop and hit festival. On Sunday afternoon, the public broadcaster RAI, which always broadcasts the festival and gathers the people in front of the television every year, announced that Angelina Mango will also represent Italy at the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in May in Malmö, Sweden. The ESC final was a dream he would never have dared to dream of, Mango had shouted to the audience at the Ariston Theater at around 2:30 on Sunday morning, who had risen to give a proper round of applause.
Daughter of musician Pino Mango and singer Laura Valente
Although the singer herself may have been to the festival in Sanremo for the first time, people there have known the name “Mango” for a long time. Angelina Mango is the daughter of musician Pino Mango, who died in 2014 aged just 60 – after suffering a heart attack at a concert – and who had a breakthrough in Sanremo in 1985 and performed at the festival again and again in the following years. His mother is the singer Laura Valente, who debuted with the band “Matia Bazar” in 1992 in Sanremo and was also one of the regular guests there. As a “figlia d'arte” – which means “daughter of art” rather than “daughter of artists” – the basically likable Angelina Mango was immediately embraced by the nation after her triumph in Sanremo as the reigning favorite of the lighter arts. of singing.
A total of 30 soloists and bands performed in Sanremo this year – from veterans in the fall of their careers to established greats and young stars. Hollywood stars such as John Travolta and Russell Crowe were also flown in. The former performed dance numbers from his big hits as well as a strange duck dance. Another made fun of the first's dance moves, especially the duck dance. And since politics and running debates always play a role in Sanremo, the cow Ercolina achieved a certain level of fame this year. Protesting farmers had taken the proud Simmental cattle from a Lombardy village for a walk on the waterfront in front of the casino and the Ariston Theatre. However, the Ercolina stage performance that the farmers had hoped for did not happen. Instead, moderator Amadeus, who shaped the festival for the fifth and final time this year as artistic director and master of ceremonies, read a message from the farmers. Unlike Germany and France, Italian farmers' demonstrations were and are directed primarily against the EU, not their own government, which in turn has aligned itself with anti-Brussels farmers.
This year, Ercolina the cow and the existential lawsuit of real farmers won, while last year the big wake-up call was led by millionaire influencer Chiara Ferragni, even as Amadeus' co-moderator on one of the five festival nights. Ferragni, meanwhile, has been embroiled in a spate of alleged charity campaign fraud that netted her and her husband, rapper Fedez, millions more in profits. Just before the start of the festival, the beverage company Coca-Cola withdrew an already produced video with Ferragni, which should have been shown during commercial breaks during broadcasts.
As a crowd-puller, Sanremo remains a unique success. On Tuesday, opening night, nearly 17 million viewers were registered in prime time, which is an incredible 65 percent market share. The following TV evenings and nights, which lasted until the early hours of the morning during the five days of the festival, always had an average of over ten million viewers. And instead of Ferragni's Coca-Cola slogans, the Roman government, for example, invited (television) people to subscribe to government bonds during commercial breaks: “favorable returns, especially for small investors.”